Monday Reads: White House gays, Amazon shame, gadgetry & the GOP

Amazon.com is making it harder to find books about gay topics because, you know, everything we write just has to be considered porn. Actually, let's call this censorship of books with positive content about LGBT folks, including, of all things, Ellen DeGeneres' autobiography. (boo!) Sarah Hepola has a good overview of the situation.

LGBT families are welcomed to The White Hosue to participate in the annual Easter Egg roll. Bilerico has background and live blogging of the event. How delightful to be invited -- and accepted. (yay!)

It was just a few short weeks ago that the Obama Administration reached out to Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of Family Equality Council, asking us to encourage LGBT families to apply for tickets to this year's Egg Roll, ensuring us that our families would be included in the cross section of America present on the White House lawn that day.

James Dobson tells followers in his farewell speech that the religious right lost the culture wars and that the "world has turned colder for the family." Of course, he also urges his followers not to give up. As for the world turning colder for the family, see White House lawn, and Easter Egg rolling, and acceptance. I think the world has become warmer for ALL families, but you have to be able to open your eyes and your heart to see it.

Paul Krugman looks at the Republican Party then and now, and sees a whole load of destructive crazy.

Farhad Manjoo looks at Twitter and doesn't see the love, but does provide a short primer on the how and what of microblogging. Comparing Twitter to IM and email, he notes:

Twitter is different. It's not a faster or easier way of doing something you did in the past, unless you were one of those people who wrote short "quips" on bathroom stalls. It's a totally alien form of communication. Microblogging mixes up features of e-mail, IM, blogs, and social networks to create something not just novel but also confusing, and doing it well takes time and patience. That's not to say it isn't useful; to some people in some situations, Twitter is irreplaceable. But it is not—or, at least, not yet—a necessary way to stay socially relevant in the information age.

Slow death by gadget, or why it's about time we made different choices.

"Technology does not loan you money or come by to see you when you are sick or sad. It may connect you with someone who does, but the characteristics that are truly human must be transmitted by humans," surmises Derek Smith. "Much of the human experience is about sight, sound, smell, touch, and intuition that in turn require human contact and proximity."